GOOGLE
IS PLANNINGto launch a censored
version of its search engine in China that will blacklist
websites and search terms about human rights, democracy,
religion, and peaceful protest, The Intercept can reveal.

The
project – code-named Dragonfly – has been underway since
spring of last year, and accelerated following a December
2017 meeting between Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and a top
Chinese government official, according to internal Google
documents and people familiar with the plans.

Teams
of programmers and engineers at Google have created a
custom Android app, different versions of which have been
named “Maotai” and “Longfei.” The app has already been
demonstrated to the Chinese government; the finalized
version could be launched in the next six to nine months,
pending approval from Chinese officials.

The
planned move represents a dramatic shift in Google’s
policy on China and will mark the first time in almost a
decade that the internet giant has operated its search
engine in the country.

Google’s
search service cannot currently be accessed by most
internet users in China because it is blocked by the
country’s so-called Great Firewall. The app Google is
building for China will comply with the country’s strict
censorship laws, restricting access to content that Xi
Jinping’s Communist Party regime deems unfavorable.

The
search app will “blacklist sensitive queries.”

The
Chinese government blocks information on the internet
about political opponents, free speech, sex, news, and
academic studies. It bans websites about the 1989
Tiananmen Square massacre, for instance, and references to
“anticommunism” and “dissidents.” Mentions of books that
negatively portray authoritarian governments, like George
Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, have beenprohibitedon
Weibo, a Chinese social media website. The country also
censors popular Western social media sites like Instagram,
Facebook, and Twitter, as well as American news
organizations such as the New York Times and the Wall
Street Journal.

Documents
seen by The Intercept, marked “Google confidential,” say
that Google’s Chinese search app will automatically
identify and filter websites blocked by the Great
Firewall. When a person carries out a search, banned
websites will be removed from the first page of results,
and a disclaimer will be displayed stating that “some
results may have been removed due to statutory
requirements.” Examples cited in the documents of websites
that will be subject to the censorship include those of
British news broadcaster BBC and the online encyclopedia
Wikipedia.

The
search app will also “blacklist sensitive queries” so that
“no results will be shown” at all when people enter
certain words or phrases, the documents state. The
censorship will apply across the platform: Google’s image
search, automatic spell check and suggested search
features will incorporate the blacklists, meaning that
they will not recommend people information or photographs
the government has banned.

Within
Google, knowledge about Dragonfly has been restricted to
just a few hundred members of the internet giant’s
88,000-strong workforce, said a source with knowledge of
the project. The source spoke to The Intercept on
condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to
contact the media. The source said that they had moral and
ethical concerns about Google’s role in the censorship,
which is being planned by a handful of top executives and
managers at the company with no public scrutiny.

“I’m
against large companies and governments collaborating in
the oppression of their people.”

“I’m
against large companies and governments collaborating in
the oppression of their people, and feel like transparency
around what’s being done is in the public interest,” the
source said, adding that they feared “what is done in
China will become a template for many other nations.”

Patrick
Poon, a Hong Kong-based researcher with human rights group
Amnesty International, told The Intercept that Google’s
decision to comply with the censorship would be “a big
disaster for the information age.”

“This
has very serious implications not just for China, but for
all of us, for freedom of information and internet
freedom,” said Poon. “It will set a terrible precedent for
many other companies who are still trying to do business
in China while maintaining the principles of not
succumbing to China’s censorship. The biggest search
engine in the world obeying the censorship in China is a
victory for the Chinese government – it sends a signal
that nobody will bother to challenge the censorship any
more.”

It
is unclear whether Google will eventually launch a desktop
version of its censored China search platform. For now,
the company is focused on initially rolling out the
Android app, which a large portion of China’s population
will be able to access. Researchersestimatethat
more than 95 percent of people accessing the internet in
China use mobile devices to go online, and Android isby
farthe most popular mobile
operating system in the country, with 80 percent of the
market share.

The
documents seen by The Intercept suggest that Google will
operate the search app as part of a “joint venture” with
an unnamed partner company, which will presumably be
based in China. However, much of the work on the
Dragonfly project is being carried out at Google’s
Mountain View headquarters in California, about 14 miles
northwest of San Jose, the heart of Silicon Valley. Other
teams participating in the project are based out of Google
offices in New York, San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Santa
Barbara, Cambridge, Washington, D.C., Shanghai, Beijing,
and Tokyo.

PREVIOUSLY,
BETWEEN 2006and 2010, Google had
maintained a censored version of its search engine in
China. At the time, the company faced severe criticism in
the U.S. over its compliance with the Chinese government’s
policies.

During
a February 2006congressional
hearingthat focused on the
activities of American technology companies in China,
members of the House International Relations Committee
called Google a “functionary of the Chinese government”
and accused it of “abhorrent actions” for participating in
censorship. “Google has seriously compromised its ‘don’t
be evil’ policy,” declared Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J.
“Indeed, it has become evil’s accomplice.”

The
controversy eventually became too much for Google. In
March 2010, it announced that it was pulling its search
service out of China. In ablog
postpublished at the time, the
company cited Chinese government efforts to limit free
speech, block websites, and hack Google computer systems
as reasons why it “could no longer continue censoring our
results.”

Sergey
Brin, Google’s co-founder, was born in the Soviet Union
and seemed particularly sensitive to concerns around
censorship, having had personal experience under a
repressive regime. After Google ceased its search service
in 2010, Brinsaidthat
the company’s objection related to “forces of
totalitarianism,” and added that he hoped the decision to
pull the search platform out of the country would help
lead to a “more open internet.”

“Companies
operating in China must be prepared to turn over user data
to security agencies.”

Since
then, however, censorship and surveillance in China has
become more pervasive. In 2016, the country’s government
passed a new cybersecurity law, which Human Rights Watchsaid“strengthens
censorship, surveillance, and other controls over the
internet.” The government is using newautomated
systemsto monitor and censor the
internet, and it hascracked
downon privacy technologies that
Chinese people were using to circumvent the restrictions.

“It
has been a requirement that companies operating in China
must be prepared to police their users and turn over user
data to security agencies upon request,” said Ron Deibert,
director of Citizen Lab, an internet research group
based at the University of Toronto. “We have also
found overall that internet censorship [in China] is
evolving towards less transparency, with less notification
to users when messages are censored or removed across all
platforms.”

Despite
the continued repression, opinions have changed at the
highest levels of Google. China now has more than 750
million internet users, equivalent to the entire
population of Europe. It therefore represents a
potentially massive revenue stream for the internet giant,
which is likely a factor in its decision to relaunch the
search platform in the country.

Another
reason for the planned policy reversal may be that since
Google last operated its search tool in China, the
company’s leadership structure has markedly changed.
Co-founders Brin and Larry Page have adopted less hands-on
roles, though they still serve on the company’s board of
directors.

Google’s
China rapproachment has been spearheaded by Pichai,
Google’s current CEO, a 46-year-old Indian-American who
took the helm in October 2015. At a June 2016 conference
in southern California, Pichai made his intentions clear.
“I care about servicing users globally in every corner.
Google is for everyone,” he said. “We want to be in China
serving Chinese users.”

In
December 2017, sources say Pichai traveled to China and
attended a private meeting with Wang Huning, a leading
figure in the Communist Party. Huning is President Xi’s
top foreign policy adviser and has been described as
“China’s Kissinger.” Pichai is said to have viewed the
meeting as a success. The same month, Googleannouncedthat
it was launching an artificial intelligence research
center in Beijing. That was followed in May 2018 with thereleaseof
a Google file management app for Chinese internet users.
Then, in July, Googlerolled
outa “Guess The Sketch” game on
WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging and social media
platform.

The
finale would be the launch of the search app — the
Dragonfly project. According to sources familiar with the
plans, timing for the app’s release will depend on two
main factors: approval from the Chinese government and
confidence within Google that its app will be better than
the search service offered by its main competitor in
China, Baidu.

Google
insiders say that it is not known when the company will
obtain the approval from officials in Beijing because an
escalating trade war between the U.S. and China has slowed
the process. However, Google’s search engine chief Ben
Gomes told staff at a meeting last month that they must be
ready to launch the Chinese search app at short notice, in
the event that “suddenly the world changes or [President
Donald Trump] decides his new best friend is Xi Jinping.”

Google
and the Chinese government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs
did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this
story.